Changing Sermon Tapes to MP3s

[frokey]

One other note on this topic...

Several years back at a former church, I was faced with this task. I too was daunted by the fact that it took so long to do. I got the idea to use a dual cassette player and used the hi-speed dubbing with a dummy cassette in the recording side and my source in the play side. I connected this to my computer and recorded to Sound Forge. Once in the computer, I reduced the speed anywhere from 40-60%. Worked very well for me and reduced the work time significantly.

One problem with this method is that the speed might not be consistent throughout depending on the tape and the player used. If audio fidelity is first priority, this may not work for you. But, if you're mainly concerned with archiving and you have a ton of tapes to do, this might be a good approach.

[hzonscope]

One of largest stumbling blocks in digitally archiving audio is that it is labour intensive. I have done a lot of archiving of audio cassettes by using the Pro Tools a powerful tool also with the ability to run batch jobs you can make short work of many files. If you are looking for something that may be a little easier on the pocket book Roxio Creater there is some automation in the capture process and noise filters are not to bad, if most of the audio is speech also if the recording are done with in the same formats , levels, types of tapes etc. The name of the game is set up a dedicated workstation, when you got system, run it 24 hours of the day. With most capture software there is a max time limit setting and ability to save your settings and filters, you can automate the whole process. Just a lot of sweat work up front, but when you have it working it will pay off.